Reconceiving Curriculum: An Historical Approach: Using Wittgenstein's later philosophy to disrupt the Ramist methodological underpinnings of the modern school curriculum

This book reconceives curriculum using an historical approach that employs Wittgenstein’s later philosophy. The curriculum field is concerned with the broad intellectual and ideological ways a society thinks about education. The school curriculum''s current focus on specific learning outcomes offers a selective historical view of knowledge. The concept of curriculum emerged at the end of the Renaissance from Peter Ramus’ refinement of the art of dialectic into a pedagogical method of logic. During the 1970s, curriculum theorists began disrupting curriculum''s rational foundations by reconceptualizing curriculum using philosophies developed outside of education. Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is used to further disrupt the school curriculum’s rational underpinnings. Using a Wittgenstein approach suggests that education is an indirect activity that teaches students what he calls language-games. Wittgenstein suggests that educating students indirectly more closely resembles the kinds of playful activities in which children engage in their everyday lives. As such, a Wittgensteinian approach reconceives curriculum as an act of language-play.

Stephen S. Triche is an associate professor in the Department of Teacher Education at Nicholls State University. He received his Ph.D. in curriculum theory and a M.A. in history from Louisiana State University. He is currently the Assistant Dean at Nicholls State and President of the Southeast Philosophy of Education Society.